Building with Boxes

I transferred 349 photos from my phone to my desktop computer and then to my external hard drive this weekend. 90% of those pictures were all focused on the same topic: boxes.

Back in 2019, ironically roughly around the same time of year, I gave students boxes to play with and they had a ball. Over this recent winter break, a colleague and I came into school to organize the tech cupboard. I had been saving all the boxes from Chromebooks our school purchased over the years in case we had to ship any back. My tech partner gently informed me that this wasn't necessary, so we removed all these empty boxes from storage. I couldn't bear to throw them away, so we moved them to the library. I knew we could use them, somehow. 

An empty, plain box is one of the ultimate "loose parts". Even though I have a lot of assignments to wrap up in preparation for Term 1 report card marks, I just had to provide time for students to explore and experiment with the dozens and dozens (really, well over 100) boxes of approximately the same shape and size. The students LOVED it. I was pleased with their creativity and collaboration too. (Cleaning up wasn't fun; the library was a mess for the entire week that the boxes lived in the library, but it was a temporary inconvenience.)

Here are some of the different ways the students used the boxes. I'll only include the photos that don't have students (or reveal no faces).

• constructing houses with lots of privacy

• making "chill space" hangouts

• including windows in their walls

• stacking tall towers as high has they could go
• letting the towers crash down on them and squealing in delight

• building furniture like chairs, sofas, beds and tables

• constructing a new play space for the skinny pigs (the student that made the setup below was disappointed that I wouldn't take the skinny pigs out of the cage to let them try it out)

• making covered contraptions like this long tunnel

• channeling their "inner cats" by hiding in boxes

• balancing boxes on their sides to make a maze or road

• wearing boxes as armor or clothing (not shown here)

• using other materials to supplement the boxes (like the skinny pig hay) (I moved this into their cage, as it's safe for rodents to chew cardboard.)

• pretending the boxes were something else (like these girls working on their computer tables typing on their cardboard laptops) (other big pretend options were delivery workers bringing packages)

At first, I asked students not to alter the boxes by drawing or cutting them, because I planned on using the boxes for my social studies project. To be honest, I designed this project with the boxes in mind. The Grade 3 and 4s will be doing a "City In A Box" project as a well to end their units on Living and Working in Ontario and Canada's Provinces and Territories. 

Near the end of the week, I started asking the other classes if they could use the cardboard for anything else, as reusing it would be better than just recycling it. My eco-friendly colleagues rose to the challenge. The Grade 7s and 8s seized a large amount to use for their Carnival French projects. The Grade 3 teachers requested the inside packing cardboard inserts for their upcoming structures unit.  They stack really well and are even more sturdy than the boxes themselves. The Kindergarten classes collected some for potential use at some point in the future. One Grade 5 teacher asked for some for science. By Friday night, thank goodness, all the cardboard was gone.

I need to figure out a good way to share the photos I took that include the students. We are getting a new TV for the hall to project good news and student recognition - maybe I'll compile the images into a slide show that can run on the TV for a couple of weeks.